443: Why David Lebovitz Switched from Blogging to Substack

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Hey there, this is Emily from the Food Blogger Pro team and you are listening to the Food Blogger Pro Podcast this week. On the podcast we are welcoming back David Leibovitz. It has been six or seven years since he was last on the podcast and we have really missed chatting with him. We always love everything that David does and he is just a joy to listen to on the podcast. His sense of humor is unmatched. This is an awesome interview for really every food creator to listen to because David has been in the food blogging space for a long time. He started out as a pastry chef and started his first food blog back in 1999. He has been around for every new social media platform, algorithm update and trend in the last 25 years and has so much knowledge to share from it. In this interview, David and Bjork chat a lot about David's recent change from food blogging to writing his newsletter over on Substack. He shares lots of tips and tricks that he's learned about Substack and why he loves the platform so much. He Also talks a bit about what he misses about blogging and. And just how he thinks he's had so much success with his newsletter. In the interview, he mentions that he has been able to quadruple his food blogging income by switching to substack. So he is definitely a great resource on this topic and you won't want to miss this episode. Without further ado, I'll let Bjork take it away.

David, welcome to the podcast. Hello.

Thanks for inviting me back. I'm thrilled to be here.

Yeah, it's great. Great to have you back. You were last on in 2017. A few things have changed since then, but that's kind of. Yeah, that's. That's kind of the name of the game, though, is. Is in this world, things are often changing. And that's what we're going to talk about today is showing up, being willing to change and evolve. And you have lots of different iterations of that over your career. I mean, we could go way back. You know, you in. If you want to include general food as the focus. You started your career as a 16 year old washing dishes and went on to be involved in restaurants. So for those who didn't catch that first interview years ago, catch us up to speed kind of on your general arc, your story as a creator, as a publisher, and before that, as somebody who's in the world of food.

Okay, well, one, one word you didn't use was adapt. And I know that you talk about adapting elsewhere, but it's true. Whatever you do in life, you really do need to be adapting to what's going on or adopting. I, you know, I was a pastry chef for many years, and When I hit 40, I moved to France and I was writing cookbooks and I thought I would take advantage of this thing called the Internet and do a blog, which really nobody heard of. This is 1999.

What was it on? Like, was it on Blogger blog spot? Oh, it.

It was on movable type.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yep.

Like most people, this is when they start, like, blanking out. But, you know, it was thrilling to be able to use this media, this medium, I guess I should say. But I had to code everything, like, just to write one sentence. Yeah, I had to learn how to code. And, you know, before I was a baker, I was making chocolate cakes and ice cream and sharing recipes. But I'm also very communicative. Like, I like talking to people. I like learning from people. You know, bakers especially, we like to learn things. And we're social, we're Kind of like antique dealers. Like, we work well when we're together. Kind of like, you know, we're in this group of people. And so I thought I would try to start. I would start a website and a blog. And I. I didn't really know what was going to happen, but everybody thought I was crazy. And they were like, why are you writing for free?

Like, this is bad. You shouldn't.

You shouldn't share things and so forth.

Yeah.

So I did that for eight years. Seven or maybe six years or eight years. Then a couple people started reading it after.

After years of hard work.

And I'm. I'm not really, you know, I'm not really exaggerating. People think, you know, now a lot of people come in, start blogging, and they're like, how do I get traffic? It's like, well, okay, build something for eight years. And then, you know.

Yeah, right. And I think that's one of the things that people don't see often is the incredible hard work that people put into a thing. And part of that, too, is like, your story also existed eight to ten years before that. Like, because you were refining your craft and you were learning how to do what you're doing to then be able to write about it. And then the writing was a craft that you were refining and figuring out. And it seems like often we look at somebody and we're like, oh, my gosh, they're an overnight success. But so often there's years of focus and effort and hard work. And it sounds like that's a little bit of what you're saying, too, with creating content online. It was years of doing that, and then there was a few people, and then more people, and then more people, and suddenly you look and you have an audience. Yeah.

And then there's a tech element that people don't see. You know, you. You publish this beautiful blog with great recipes and photos with Lindsay, but people don't realize to get that photo, you're not just putting the food on the couch. I mean, now it's much easier to take a good photo than it used to be. But it's a lot. You know, formatting people are like, oh, you should have a button that keeps the recipe on the screen.

Right, Right.

I have no idea how to do that.

In.

In the. The act of pressing the button is really easy. The act of building a button that does that. It's like that. That is really hard. And it's one of the things that I think exists in the world of technology. I think this also Applies to social media is technology now is relatively easy to use. It's relatively easy to publish something to Instagram to, like, sign up and have a newsletter. It's not easy, but it's a lot easier to publish a piece of content on a website. And therefore, it seems like the building of a following and momentum and having success should also be easy. But that's actually really hard. That takes years and effort. And it's easier than it was for sure, right?

There were platforms like Blogger and Type Pad where you could just start going, yeah, but if you wanted to do anything interesting and also you didn't own the content, you know, it's the same thing we're seeing with Instagram. All these people are becoming Instagram stars, I guess, whatever, lack of a better word. You know, recipes and so forth. But you don't know the platform. Instagram can change. Yes, their mind or they decide who sees what.

Yes, indeed. We. For people who have been creating long enough, Facebook is. There's this really infamous season where people grew these really popular pages. And then it was kind of overnight, you'd be looking around and your friend over here would have their organic reach turned off, and then somebody else would have it turned off and you'd just kind of be waiting for it to come for you. And eventually it was all pages where the generally speaking, organic reach on just normal posts was turned off. And so I hear you saying that, like, you have these platforms, it creates this ease of publishing. You can grow a following. You still have to be a sharp creator. You have to create really good, compelling content. But even then it could be turned off and you have to, like, evolve into the next thing. But you've done that so many times. And it's one of the things that I'd be interested to hear your reflections on, kind of your mindset on it. And what we've seen is, you know, especially when we first started publishing content 2010, 2011, there was still maybe some of that lingering idea of like, wait, you're publishing stuff for free online? It's a little bit of like a disruption to an industry. And then it happens. And now we're seeing it again in multiple different ways. Like, search is changing. We have artificial content, like AI generated content that's being created. So there's all of these different kind of evolutions that are happening. You have creators in the food world who are like TikTok creators, and it's like, oh, this is very different than creating five, six, seven years ago. So for you as a creator and this was actually a question that somebody wrote in our Facebook group. We have people who follow along with the Facebook group with a podcast and a Facebook group. And they said, this is Alexandra. And she said, he's been writing about French food and life in Paris for such a long time and knows how to adapt to new technology without losing his true message or vision. I'd love to hear him talk about all his evolution. So what. What does that look like for you to endure through all of these different technological changes and to preserve your, like, passion and vision and, like, authenticity as a creator, which you've done as you've had as a through line, despite using different technologies?

Well, I, like, I was going to use the word through line that you just mentioned, which is great, because, first of all, authenticity. The Internet's all about authenticity. Even now we're seeing all these TikToks and Instagram and people are staying in these fancy hotel rooms in Paris with the Eiffel Tower in the background. But it's like, is this is. You know, are we going to look back on these people and go, wow, that was amazing. Or.

Yeah.

So to me, it's. I've always been authentic, for better or worse. You know, initially, I actually got criticized a lot when I moved to France. I was new here. I was writing about this culture that a lot of people have, this image that everybody in France is beautiful, skinny, they eat well, behave, you know, polite and so forth. And that's not necessarily the case. It's a real city. You know, people.

People.

Women. Also, you know, there was a book, you know, why French Women Don't Get Fat, which, you know, is not presenting an accurate view of the people here because everybody is different.

Yeah.

Now, I always wrote about the real stuff in my life, and I didn't varnish anything. Also made. Tried to make it funny. And nobody was really doing that about France, really. And Americans are fascinated by friends. So I had a little bit of a, you know, maybe if I was living in, you know, Brisbane or.

Sure.

You know, Nagoya, Japan, I might not have had the success that I have. Sure.

But.

Or had.

Yeah. Have.

But, you know, there was always a straight line. And I'm the same on Instagram. I use things like Instagram and Facebook and my blog and my newsletter, all for different things.

Yeah.

Parts of me. So. And I thought, like, for social media, I don't really. I remember using Facebook a lot. I had a friend who, when Facebook changed their algorithm, his whole website. He had a whole big, huge website, and it just collapsed.

Yeah.

And you shouldn't put all, you should do a little bit of everything, whatever you like, whatever works. But I, I like to believe that people will see through inauthentic content.

Yep.

A lot of flashy people doing all this stuff on Instagram, eating in fancy restaurants, you know, showing caviar, you know, that costs a thousand dollars. And the, you know, I love this. Or the waiter shaving truffles in their mouth. It gets a lot of comments.

It happens at all French restaurants. Right? Isn't that how they do it in France?

Yeah, it's like, how do I reserve that table?

So.

But I still, you know, I wonder, you know, the number one cookbook last year was by a tick tocker or number one book, maybe. I think the number one cookbook, it's a fellow who does recipes from yesteryear. And he's not, not a professional. He doesn't, he didn't even have a website. He was just looking for something to do. Yeah, I find that interesting.

It's. Yeah, interesting is the same thing that I was going to say. And one of the things that I think is true in the world of content creation right now is that you almost have to have hybrid skills. You have to have some skills in the area of content that you're creating. So for us, we talk about food, but for other people it's humor or finance. But you also have to be really good. And if we're talking about platforms right now, you also have to be really good at understanding. And this probably has to be one of the primary skills. You have to be really good at understanding the platform itself, what's working, what goes viral, how to build a following. And so what can happen is you can have people who are maybe the ultimate expert in a subject matter, but they're not, they don't have a strong expertise in a platform or in viral content or in mass producing content, whatever it might be, that's working well on the respective platforms. And so what you get is people who are kind of these hybrids, they have some understanding, a passion and interest in the content, but then they're really good at understanding the platform. And that's neither here nor there. It's just an observation around the reality of success on some of these platforms. One of the places it feels like that's not true, that really what it comes down to is your expertise, your ability to like kind of a pure content creation is building a following through a platform like substack, which that's something that you've done. You have over 200,000 people subscribe to your Substack newsletter. And that, to me, feels like. And would be interested in your thoughts on it. But a platform for a writer, for a creator, for somebody who's like word for word, who isn't thinking about viral content the same way, a platform that's a pretty good fit for creating content. Has that felt true for you? And what does your journey into Substack look like?

Well, when I was blogging for so long, near the last few years of it, I started getting the feeling, you know, search was all about recipes. You know, what are people looking for? And all these blogs started and they were all like, doing the same recipes, viral recipes, without a lot of authority in. You know, they were just. People were just doing them because they wanted to get Google search. And I just didn't want to do that. Like, I was focusing on recipes because they were organic to me. I would feel like, oh, my God, I got these carrots at the market. I'm going to make pickles or I'm going to do something so at all. So my blog, you know, it became. It started becoming a recipe blog. I remember telling Elise Bauer, who had simply recipes, you know, wonderful website and wild smile.

I think also started on movable type. Yeah. Which is such a weird fact that I have in my head. But, yep, that's another story. Yeah.

Actually went to their office once. I was like, can you make this easier? But I forgot where I was. But okay, so I was doing recipes a lot. And then I started, you know, I said to Elise once, I said, well, I. My blog is not a food blog. And she looked at me and she's like, what? Because I was writing about a lot of other topics, like restaurants to go to in France, travel tips, maybe something goofy, you know, French people's obsession with keys, you know, keys everywhere. And they're really $300 if you lose your key. And so it wasn't. But I started just doing recipes, churning through recipes.

Yeah.

And kind of burnt out on it.

Like, it felt soulless for you to be doing that type of work.

It felt soulless. Plus, I was sort of using other people's recipes, like adapting them, which, yeah, a bad thing in a way. But my blog was also becoming. Well, this is adapted from so and so's new book. And I really like the book and I would promote the book and so forth.

Y.

On the other hand, I was like, well, basically, like, when I'm writing a cookbook, if I'm going to use somebody's. Like, if I have One like Lindsay, if she might has. If she has, like, a caramel cake recipe, I can. There's a story about that. I could say, like, oh, you know, I. You know, this. Lindsay has this wonderful caramel cake recipe, and I make it. I like to add kumquat sauce and blah, blah, blah. And there's a story there. It's organic to me. So I kind of got burnt out on recipes because I was getting the same questions over and over and over.

And over and over and over and over and over and over. Questions about the recipes, like, can you adapt this by adding. Can you use sugar instead of brown sugar?

Like, well, I actually love. When I was baking in restaurants, I loved when people had food issues. This is sort of before everybody, all these diets. But when some. When the. When the waiter come in and go, these people don't eat sugar or they don't eat flour. This is before the whole everything.

Yes.

To me, it was interesting because it was a challenge.

Yeah.

We had one woman that only ate white food, and I was like. And she showed up wearing this all white outfit.

Funny.

Ate her white asparagus with white truffles.

And that's, like, a fun challenge. Like, in that season, I was like, hey, this is kind of fun.

But then people started, like, challenging my recipes. They're like, well, you know, they would start bragging about how much sugar they cut out of it. And I was like, I'm doing a recipe. I've been doing a recipe the last three days here.

Yeah.

I have, like, six pages of notes. It's like, you know, when I post the recipe, it's because I test it, and this is how I like it. And then people were sort of showing off how. How little sugar they ate. And.

Yeah. Yeah.

Finally had to post something. I was like, please stop. Like, if you want to reduce the sugar, it's fine.

It's just.

This is.

I like the sugar sourcing. Yeah.

So I got burnt out, and I liked having a blog. But then, like, all of a sudden, WordPress is like, you need to switch to block editor. And that was like, the breaking point for me. And also the photography, like, Lightroom. I just never figured it out. It was a mess. I was sort of, you know, I could. I figured out how to use some of it, but it was just. I was like, this isn't why I do what I do. It's not just in front of my computer.

Yeah.

I remember you helped me once with a issue with a. It was retina screens.

Sure.

That was like, one of the nervous breakdown moments. You know, if I did like a timeline, I had like a three week nervous break. And you guys were amazing. That's why.

Good. Yeah.

That's a good thing about the blogging community. People are always helpful. So when Substack approached me, they said, you know, we have this platform and, you know, would you like to switch? And I said no.

Because it's like another thing to do. And another.

Well, I didn't believe in it so much.

When was this?

Oh, it was like three or four years ago.

Okay.

Maybe three years ago. I had had a newsletter. I'd had it since, I think 2006. I went, that's another. This is. This would be part two of this podcast video cast. I had. I had my newsletter over the years and I was also like a little upset how much it was costing me to send it out. It was like 400amonth. And I don't mind paying people for a thing. I don't mind paying for services because. But I was like, well, that's like a trip to Hawaii.

Yeah. Every year. Yeah.

Yeah.

Email people. Yeah.

And they're just sending, you know, and I was. My, my newsletter doesn't. There's no monetization in it. Although, you know, people might buy my books and go to my website. Anyway, I was, I started thinking, you know, I spent a few months thinking about it. They. They actually said, you know, we think you could make a lot more money than you're making now. And I'm not motivated by money, which is, you know, I'm reading Barbra Streisand's thousand page memoir.

Yeah.

And she's also, she talks, she's like, I never do things for the money. I always do things. The quality first. And that's why she. I mean, she's wealthy.

Yeah.

She lost a lot of money over the years and so forth.

Sure. But it's also like, Simon Sinek talks about it as fuel for your car, and your car gets you to where you want to go. And similar with like the paying. If you're paying $500 a month versus making 500 or whatever it might be, makes it easier to, if you do have something you want to do, to like justify whatever it is that you're doing.

I have a podcast and I pay an Editor 3 or $400 per episode to edit it. There's no ads, it's not sponsored or anything. But I just think, you know, it's kind of. I've always wanted to talk to people in, you know, in my field and maybe people that people wouldn't know, but that was. It was very interesting. I was very nervous about leaving my blog. Shall we? Because it was a part of me for 18 or so. You.

Well, and around the same time, you had won an award of like, blog of the decade.

Saur.

Yeah, like, it was kind of right around that time, wasn't it?

You know, that was SE magazine. And as people who are, you know, I was a professional cook and cookbook author. But I also appreciate the fact, like, blogging. One of the great things about blogging, especially when I started, you had people in like India and Vietnam and, you know, Syria writing about their cooking and food. And it was like, wow, this is great. Like, you don't need. There was no. There were no gatekeepers. We could do whatever. And Savor magazine was kind of like that. They focused on different kinds of people. It was a lot. I felt like they were putting me out to pasture.

How so?

No, just, you know, when you get like a lifetime award.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, I see. Yeah, like, applaud, kind of.

They're coming back. What's interesting about Savoir is the. One of the old editors, she bought the magazine and she's bringing it back. No, you know, she's self financing it and everything, so.

Oh, interesting. So can you talk a little bit about that stretch? Because my guess is there are people who can relate to you as you reflect on what it was like to kind of feel a certain amount of burnout. Maybe there's some industry changes that are happening. And, you know, I think on the podcast I'll occasionally talk about this idea of waves and surfers and what happens is with the Internet, there are these waves and sometimes like, you know, there. There'll be a wave of like early blogging and people can catch that wave and maybe they're also a really good surfer. And I feel like in your case, like, there's this wave of early blogging where people are following blogs and you're also really good at it. And so you have this like, tandem thing where, like, you're excited about it, there's a wave, you catch it, inevitably waves will crash, crash. And then there's another wave. And the question is, do I want to ride this next wave and do I think I'll be good at riding this next wave? And another example would be Instagram. It's very photo forward. People who are great photographers curated. That's a wave. You have people who ride that wave and they're really good at riding that wave. They Love riding that wave. And suddenly Instagram's like, we're gonna do videos and we're gonna do videos that are short form, real based, you know, story kind of. Yeah. And it's 60 seconds. And so now, now suddenly these people who are really good at photography, writing story along with it in a description, having a curated feed now it switches and you have somebody who's really good at humor and doing. Doing short form content on video. And that's a wave. So for you, what was that season like? As you felt either your desire to like ride another wave or a certain wave kind of like crashing or subsiding, as you analyzed the landscape or the seascape and made decisions around what then, what the next wave was that you wanted to ride or like, what was that like?

Well, one of the waves I let go back out to the ocean was Twitter and X. I was never getting any traffic from. Wasn't a place where I spent. I used to spend time there. It was more interesting. And then it's not necessarily for any political or sociological reasons. I left Twitter X. Although I hate the name X.

That's all right. We can just call it Twitter. We'll call Twitter.

No, it just, you know, was. I wasn't getting anything out of it. And I'm not getting. I used to like Facebook because I liked the interaction I was getting with people. But Instagram's a very good example because I was doing fine on Instagram. And then they were like, videos, videos. And I was like, I. I'm not a video person. I can't. It's just not my skill set. I. I once tried to edit a video and it took me literally, like eight hours to do. Like, yeah, I just don't. It's fine. I make really good desserts. But really, Instagram reached out to me. It was right at the beginning of COVID And they go, we really like you. And I was like, what? Huh? And they helped. They said, you should do lives. I was like, absolutely not. And then the kit started doing lives every day because I was on book. My book tour got canceled. I had 200. I had written a book on spirits and alcohol and French drinks. So I had 250 bottles of liquor to use up.

Yes.

And everyone had nothing to do. So I was working really hard. That was a. But the videos were a success. So it showed that I could do even though, you know, my voice goes up like an octave.

Sure.

Filmed. And I, you know, a lot of this stuff because, you know, you say something like, I hate X and Every.

You can't.

You can't.

Yeah, totally. 3:00am you're thinking, you hear that words of you echoing, I hate X.

Make up an X. All these people like, he hates hack you, girl. Anyway. But I'm, you know, I try to do reels, but it's not my skill set. And it's fine. We don't have to be good at everything. I mean, you're parents and you make mistakes. You people drop their babies and.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Doesn't mean you're a bad parent. It means.

Yes, totally, totally don't drop your baby. Yeah, yeah. So. So pro tip. So how did. What did it look like for you to come out of that? Like, to essentially put a bow into. Or maybe it's not putting a bow on it, but to say, you know, okay, I feel this tension. I know that things have evolved and what was now isn't. But I'm going to endure as a creator and find the next thing that feels like a good fit. Do you feel like you have that now with Substack? It feels like a little bit more of a pure place to just write. And how did. How did you navigate that season? Like, for other people who are trying to figure that out, what advice would you give them?

Well, there were some caveats I. I was worried about before I switched to Substack. One was, who owns the content?

Sure.

And, like, abs. And they've actually, you know, I don't. I don't have a. I. They have every. They've actually thought of everything. They're like, you can actually download your whole newsletter. Here's a button to do it.

I was like, okay, export all your subscribers and the content you've created.

And, yeah, it's like, you can just. Because also at the time, they were. Facebook had started their own newsletter service, and so did Twitter and a couple of. And I said, what if you guys get blocked by Facebook? They're like, that will never happen.

I was like, yeah, right.

Facebook and other newsletters were offering some writers a substantial amount of money to move to the platforms. We discussed that, and it was a lot. It was a. It was probably, you know, I know your audience is very sure, open about talking about money, but it was more than twice what my annual revenue was writing my blog.

Yeah. So that was an offer to come to Facebook. Facebook specifically.

Oh, that was. Facebook was making a similar author offer to other people, and people took them up on it. But this was Substack. Got it.

Yep.

But my contact at sepsac, he said, you know, to Be quite honest. You know, you're gonna earn that kind of money anyways.

Yeah.

So I don't think you need to take it. And they actually kind of dangled. They actually mentioned a lot of money to me at the beginning and I was. What? Not me. I would never, you know.

Yeah.

That said, it's been very fruitful. I'm making about four times what I made from my blog with my newsletter.

Yeah. Which I think is encouraging for people to hear because 1. And I've mentioned Substack specifically. But one of the things that I feel like is great about it is the game is different. You're playing a different game. And there are people who are passionate about food, who are passionate about creating content, who are passionate about connecting with people and sharing that content, but they aren't passionate about writing a piece of content that's structured to be discovered on Google and to do keyword research and. And there are people who are really passionate about that and they do great with like, search optimized recipe content. But it's like a different wave for a different surfer. And so for us as creators, part of what our job is, I feel like I'm going to be interested to hear you, your thoughts on this is to find, like, what is the wave that we feel best fit to surf. And it sounds like to some degree you've maybe found the new version of that in writing an email newsletter. Does that feel true?

Yes, it does. I mean, just backing up a little bit. You know, people have asked me about Substack and moving to Substack, and when I showed up at Substack, I already had about 80,000 newsletter subscribers.

Yes.

I came out of the gate and I was already like the number two newsletter on food. Newsletter on Substack.

Yeah.

Once again, I had that longevity. So I think, you know, people starting now. I see. And you know, we talk. You talk about numbers a lot with your followers and listeners and, you know, people are like, yay, I finally got 10,000 followers. And then how many of those are paying subscribers? I had a really hard time asking people to pay because I had what I do for free for so long. And I didn't. I didn't really necessarily want to put up a barrier to me Substack for people that don't know, you have a free version and you can have a paid version and you can set it so that only paid people comment that you can do special content for those paid people and so forth. Their philosophy, though, is to put your best content forward for free. Who get people to come and subscribe. That's what makes them subscribe.

Yep.

So that. That said, I think, you know, a lot of people might be thinking of moving to Substack. I'm like, well, you might have missed. It's hard to get people to spend $50, which is sort of what Substack recommends. You know, it's $4 a month, which. Anybody who has a computer, you know, $4 is not a huge amount of. Really not a big ask. And I do a sale once a year on Black Friday, But I think it's going to get tougher. There's a lot of newsletters. I mean, I. I can't read them all.

Yeah.

Some people are really excited about having a newsletter, and they're print putting out one, like, every two days. I'm like, whoa, yeah, yeah.

Settle down. The. And I think it comes back to one of the things that I think can often happen when I have conversations like this with people is you hear the strategy, you hear the tactic, you hear the platform, and it's like, oh, that's cool. I should go and do that. But it's kind of like if you and I were carpenters and we were talking about the things that we had built, and it was like, here's this really cool cabin on the North Shore in Minnesota on Lake Superior. It's really beautiful. And the primary tool I used was a hammer and a saw. And if everybody ran out and got hammers and saws, they were like, oh, awesome. Like, you can build cabins with this thing. I think it's important to remind people that really what people are buying isn't the tool or the mechanism or the strategy. What people are buying is the content that you are creating and whatever that offers them. It could be education, it could be entertainment. It could be, you know, it could be connection. Like that. And that is the thing that really takes time and effort. And we've talked about it a few different times, but, you know, it's like, for you, it's decades of work and consideration around you as a creator and. And people wanting to follow along with what you're doing and have purchased your books. And, you know, it's. It's kind of the ultimate example of Kevin Kelly's a thousand true fans. And it's just that amplified. Are you familiar with that? Kevin Kelly is a. He has this, like, great, iconic blog post where he talks about the Internet and a thousand true fans. And if you have a thousand true fans, like in the case of Substack, true fans would be People who subscribe like that, you can start to play the numbers game a little bit with that. And not that that's like a living salary and, you know, Paris, France, but it's like, oh, that's a. That's a salary that you can get if you find these thousand true fans. And I feel like you can play the numbers game differently when you have substack and subscribers. And. And so I think that it's. It's a exciting platform in that way. Do you have thoughts on. Or does substack provide general numbers around. Hey, if you have a thousand people who sign up, two of those will be paid subscribers. Or is it.

Does it like 5% is a good number to go for? That's 10% is your successful. Getting back to that point, you just made about the thousand pits. I used to tell people when I had my blog because I had. I write cookbooks and they. They're for sale on my site. I'm like, yeah, it's better to have 5 people reading your blog if all 5 of them buy your book than 5 million people and none of them buy your books.

Yeah, right. Right. Yeah. And it. And that's the difference between, like, that true fan and somebody who's kind of this, like, passive observer. And it feels like substack is a way to kind of quantify a little bit. Like, what is. Are there. Are these people true fans? Are they willing to pay?

I didn't believe actually that people would pay. And I'm in. You know, I have a contact there, and we talk a lot about it, and he always tells me I'm too cheap because I'm cheap. Cheap. My. Because my newsletter is 50 a year and some people are 60 or 70. I. But he's like, you know, people pay because they like you and they want to support you. And we're living in this time where people don't like paying for things. I just. Somebody using the F word because he didn't want to go to somebody's link in the profile to get their recipe.

Yeah.

And you, like, use the F word. I was like, it's a free recipe. And I went to the profile and it was easy to get. You just tap on the picture.

You literally have to click twice. Yeah.

And that's what we're. A lot of us are facing. On the other hand, you want those people as your fans.

Yeah, right.

One thing my first editor told me, which is amazing advice for anybody who. Especially in the. I'm talking to you and your audience who are food people and Writers, she said, don't waste people's time. So when you write something, you know, she didn't elaborate on that. But when you write something, when you do something, you should do it, do a good job. Do you think, am I being useful to people?

Yeah.

Think when I write my newsletter, you know, am I entertaining people with this story, this recipe going to be something they're going to want to make and enjoy reading about? You know, you have a different tact. Like Elise Bauer when she had simply recipes. I remember she's like, I need to do a. She was like, I want to do a meatloaf recipe. I want to show people how to make meatloaf. Because she was into teaching people how to cook. Whereas Lindsay might be doing like a tofu bowl with broccoli miso sauce.

Yeah.

It's not something that people are searching for online, but they like her.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, right? And it. And it feels like that's this a little bit of a crossroads that as creators, we need to figure out is, are we optimizing for discoverability? Are we optimizing for, like, a following that we have or want to maintain? How do you view, like, for. As a substack newsletter, what does it look like for you to get people to discover it? Like, you have your site, you have a social following, so you have those avenues. But, like, what does it look like to get people to actually sign up? Does that come from substack, your site? Social? A little bit of everything.

You know, I don't really look at the stats. They send them to me. I do have, like, when you go to my website, I have a thing at the top says follow me on substack and so forth. You know, I do put links in Instagram stories. I don't know how many people I get, but, you know, I just got a thing today is like an email they send every month or something. And I lost like 160 paid subscribers the last whatever, either month or a year. I don't know. And I gained like 2,000 free subscribers. So I don't really know where they come from. It's very easy. You know, I used to, when I linked to, like, paid things, people would get furious. They're like, you link to a paid thing. So now I say, you know, for paid subscribers. Yeah, yeah, tap. I've wasted their, you know, wasted their.

Time by having to click link and profile.

I did do something very interesting, though, that got a lot of paid subscribers. I had written a book about an apartment renovation 10 years ago, and people Kept saying they really wish I had. They wanted to see pictures. And the apartment renovation was a nightmare. It was a disaster. I wrote a book about might be a TV show at some point. It was a horrible, horrible thing.

Yeah.

So I post pictures and I didn't take pictures. And I was crying in the corner, curled up in a ball, crying in a corner. For two years this time, you know, this is like a year or two ago. I took pictures and I thought I would share these stories and pictures, but only with paid subscribers. So once I, I actually, you know, I found a way because I didn't really want to have pictures of my apartment out on the Internet. You know, I was like, we want to see your bathroom.

I'm like, yeah, right.

Not comfortable with that.

Yeah, we have to price for a price.

It's like your, your bedroom. People are like, we want to see your bedroom where you.

Yeah, no, can we see your pillow? Can we see a close up of your pillow?

Yeah, people do that. You know, they have all these spots, house with kitchens. So that was a really good way that I found to do something fun for people. It was fun for me to show and people had to pay.

Yeah.

And it worked out well and those.

People stuck around and it provides a little bit of a fence around certain content that like you said, maybe you don't want, you know, mass distributed and living on Instagram forever or on a blog or on online. And it kind of allows you to control it in a certain way.

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In a normal week or normal month, what does the rhythm look like for you? Do you send out like one free newsletter and then one for paid subscribers? Or how do you. Is it just kind of more like week by week? What. What you're feeling?

I send out a monthly newsletter on the first of the month, which is what I've been doing. When I, when I switched to substack, I said to everybody, if you're a subscriber to my newsletter, nothing changes. You're going to get my free newsletter and extra content throughout the month. Paid people will get preemie extra stuff. And it ended up being I probably send out five newsletters a month. Two of them might be paid. And that's my, you know, I'm working on a book now and I was like, what should I do? What do I do? Because I actually want to focus on that. But one another thing Substack has and I'm not an ad for Substack, sure, but sure have what's recommended. You do a paywall. So you send out a post to all your subscribers so people can read, you know, the story of my nervous breakdown, you know, remodeling, and you start writing the story and then there's a cutoff. It's like click here to subscribe, you know, 7 day free trial or click here to read more. And that is a proven way to get people in. They keep telling me, do that, do that, do that. And I don't do that.

Sure. Because it doesn't feel good to you to send out something that's like partial content. Like you want to send out either something that's anybody can get and read fully, or if you pay for it, then you get all of it, but not something that's like half way.

Well, it seems kind of. And I don't want to use word. Mean.

Sure. Yeah.

But a lot of people do it. They put the recipe behind a paywall. I would do it if I wrote like a story like, favorite restaurants in New York and I would list like restaurants and I might like, do the. The first ten.

Yeah.

And then say for the rest, you know, I. I just don't use it. But that's actually. They say that's very good to do.

Yep. And the interesting thing, you know, as you talk about before you have this newsletter, you're paying for it, and then now on substack, you're not, but you're making money from it. Or do you feel like you lost anything in terms of your ability to like, even. I think of some email service providers, most of them will have like a onboarding sequence where you can send out automated emails or like, is there anything like that that you feel like, oh, it was really nice. I had this before and now I don't. Or not necessarily.

No. Like, I remember when blogging, we had the RSS feeds, which were amazing. I don't know what happened to them. But I remember when I had my blog redone, the designers like, David, no one's using RSS feeds anymore.

Yeah.

And that was kind of a blow to me because that was such a great way for people to get your content without having to subscribe or anything. So I. One thing I do miss is like, to me, a blog is like your home on the Internet. No one can take it away from you. It's available to all you have. You know, I was looking at. Because I'm writing this book, you know, I have a hundred. I have a thousand recipes on my website, I think. And then there's like 220, no, 20, 25, whatever posts and 300,000 comments. And so I kind of miss that feeling. Like you're building something in a central place and.

Yeah. Yep. So when people ask you what you do, how do you describe what you do now?

Well, it depends. People ask me that a lot, and it depends because I was an a.m. or pastry chef.

Yep.

I'm a cookbook author. And a blogger. And when you say newsletter, especially in France, everything, everyone. France is like five years behind.

Sure.

Like a bat was a bad word. So it depends if I'm in a group of pastry chefs, professionals, like, especially in France, where they might not. They don't know that I actually know what I'm doing as a pastry chef or, you know, pastry chef if I'm with a group of journalists. It depends. I sometimes, because people used to make fun of me when I had a blog, I'd go to these French journal, like, Food Journalist Meals, and they were, you know, the guys, the American. They were trying to teach me about food.

Yeah, you're a blogger, so you don't know. Let me teach you also. Yeah.

And they were showing me what. What arugula was. I'm like, I got that. But I would say, well, you know, they're like, oh, you have a blog? Do you have any readers? I'm like, Yeah, I have 1.8 million a month. And they would just.

Yeah, right, right, right. Yeah.

So I would use that in that. But, you know, now with my newsletter, nobody knows or, you know, you know, cares. I'm like, I have a newsletter with, you know, a couple hundred.

They're like, just because it's not. There's no context around, like, what that is necessarily.

Well, they want a number, but they want to quantify it. They know what in people know what Instagram is now. You know, people have this big thing, like, I have 300 followers. And, you know, it's.

That means something because Instagram means something.

It does. But on the other hand, they have like a million followers. And sure, most people are thinking, wow, that's a lot.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So as you know, you can buy followers.

It's. Sure.

It's not that hard to get a million. You know, if you really wanted to do it, you could.

Yeah. Yes. Right. It's like, what really matters is engagement. Are people interacting with the content? Is it people who are actually wanting to follow it? Yeah.

That's actually such a word that so few people who don't do what we do don't understand. I have a really engaged audience.

Yeah. Yeah.

When I was building my kitchen here, I was trying to work with a kitchenware company like a Bosch or someone, and they. Nobody wanted to talk to me. But a friend of mine said, you know, they've been trying to get everybody to use induction stoves in America. You're the perfect person. They should have made you the guy. Because I had to learn how to use induction and I'm, you know, just like everybody else. I'm trying to make coffee in the morning and it's like, how do I. This thing. And you know, it's. Brands are not necessarily, you know, they're looking for whatever, maybe somebody who has a million followers on Instagram or a.

Really engaged audience for the thing that they're selling. I actually just had this conversation. We went to a hockey game last night. My friend's brother plays in the NHL and he was talking about how he was trying to work with a brand to get like a cold plunge and all the brand, like he's a fresh occupation. I don't know, he has maybe tens of thousands of followers and how the he'd reach out to these brands and like was wasn't really getting anybody to reach out to him. And my friends wife has a site and a social following. And he talked about the interesting contrast between like her reaching out and brands or not even her reaching out, but brands reaching out to her. Like she just had this influx of people like reaching out. And the what we came up with is like as we tried to figure out why that is, is this idea of engagement. And like you can have an audience that might be the same size, but if it's like a really engaged audience that's interested in you and the recommendations you have and what you're doing, like that's brands I think recognize that that's more powerful.

So I don't know. I mean, European companies operate differently than American companies. And I had some funny interactions with European companies. So I don't necessarily work that hard to try to engage with them. I did have a funny. I was doing a book and I wanted to use a certain cookware on the COVID And I contacted the French branch of the company and they were like, oh well, you know, we can sell it to you for half price and so forth. And when you're doing a book cover, you never know what's going to look good.

Yeah.

And I kind of wanted, you know, I don't live my life to get free stuff like. But sure, bookware is kind of expensive. And I didn't, you know, anyway, to make a long story short, I didn't use it. They didn't, you know, and then when I told the American people about it because I they invited me to their factory once in France, they were like, you're kidding, right? Like we could have been on the COVID of your book.

Yeah, totally. Like realizing how significant that would have been and the opportunity that was missed.

Yeah. On the other Hand, you know, it's, I'm, I'm not against people doing sponsored stuff, but in a way, it's often cleaner for me. It's like, you know what, I'll just buy the damn pot, you know, and.

Not have to worry about recommendations or. Yep, yep.

And I get invited to restaurants in Paris sometimes and they're like, you know, I'm like, well, if I don't like it, do I have to post about it? You know, and then I feel weird. So.

Yep, yep, totally. This is kind of circling back around. We have some of those questions that people from the group are interested in. Yeah, go ahead.

I love questions.

Oh, great. So this one is from Betty and she says you're one of the original food blogs, but if you're starting out as a new food blogger or content creator today, what would be your priorities or what would you do differently?

Well, you know, the game has changed now. It's, you know, like I said, you don't have to deal with coding and stuff. I think I would just, just do what I did and be authentic. I wouldn't change what I posted. Like, I was posting a lot of silly. If you go back into my blog, there's like poem or haiku about, you know, Italian candies and, you know, a lot of silly stuff. I think, you know, be useful, create something. Like when you go into a blog, don't just. Or even a newsletter say, hi, this is my newsletter. Welcome. Hope you like it. Think about, like, what do I want to do? Like, what is the purpose of what I am doing? Do I want to make myself happy? Do I want to present people foods from. If you live in Wisconsin, maybe like this, you know, this blog is going to be about Wisconsin food and I'm going to go visit Cheeses, you know, and make it something a single subject rather than, you know, family friendly recipes from my kitchen with a health, you know.

Yeah. Like, be specific. Be useful and stand clear. Yeah, stand up. Yeah, I think that's great. That's helpful. And then this is coming in from Carol. This is maybe a bigger question just in general, but like, in the world of creating and blogging, Carol says I'm keen to hear his thoughts on the future of food blogging, especially in relation to AI. So for you as a writer, for you as a creator, what are your kind of ponderings around the world of AI?

I guess because like, I, I, I don't. One day I went on AI and I said, david Leibovitz's favorite bakeries in Paris and said, Sorry, I can't show you anything about a specific person. David Leibovitz. Same thing. Then I did like cassoulet recipe, which is a French casserole dish. It's kind of thing and it a recipe popped up. I want to see though that somebody made that recipe. And that whole thing about get to the recipe or why do I have to all this conversation? I'm like, because that person is saying, you know, I tried this with potatoes and it didn't work. But then when I stirred in a half a cup of rice, it ended up being delicious. And I just don't think AI is going to replace a well written or a good recipe. People want to. All people really care about is a recipe that works. If you write a cook, if you buy a cookbook. I have a wall of cookbooks, some books I've only made one recipe from. That's all I need to. Yeah. I love Deb of Spitting Kitchen. She's a good friend of mine.

Yeah.

I don't know if I've ever made anything from her blog, but I've made stuff from her books and the recipe comes out really good.

Yes. Yeah.

So. And she's behind it. You see a real person behind it.

And part of what I think about in the world of all things online digital technology is like, what are we replicating? Like what are, what are we as humans trying to get out of this new experience? And one of the things that I think is deeply ingrained in us is the, it's almost like storytelling. And I feel like a little bit of what you hear saying is like people being like God, just get to the recipe, get to the recipe. But you leave out the context of the story. And the story a lot of times is what builds the case for the thing that you're making. And I think when I think of a recipe that's handed down from my grandma that my mom made and now Lindsay makes, like there's something to that. And I think we try and replicate that in our normal life by saying, hey, what is the story behind this? Where did you get this from? And I think that's an important piece of it. Maybe there's. I don't think it's to say that five years from now there's not some version of people getting their recipes in different ways than like a Google search. But it feels like the point about wanting to understand where this comes from is important. Like who is, who is this from? Where is it connected to?

Yeah. I also have to say, you know, like when I sometimes Adapt recipes from people's books. I have to change the recipe to get it to work right or to make it. You know, I'm working on a book now and I'm trying to make this rice cake and a computer can't, you know, you can give me a list of ingredients and tell me how to do it, but I taste it and I go, this is too flat. It needs to be hot. Or this needs more vanilla. Or it doesn't need vanilla, it could use cinnamon. And I think when people use my recipes, they trust that I have done that, done that work for them. Whereas AI is taking a thousand rice cake recipes and putting them together and you'll get a recipe and it might like Diane Jacob, who will write, she did a peanut butter recipe and she posted a picture of it that was AI generated. They looked terrible. It looks like something new. But yeah, she was, the cookies were pretty good. But I, and I don't want to sound conceited, but I'm sure if I got that recipe I would change it and make it better. I'm not saying that I'm any great.

And I think maybe as a last point that wraps the conversation well, is there might be a time when a certain subset of people five years from now, ten years from now, go to whatever search engine it is and get a recipe that is functional. And that process of I need a recipe, I'm going to go somewhere, I'm going to get it and I have a recipe for whatever it is, you know, French toast, okay, it gives you a decent French toast recipe. I think one of the things that we need to think about as creators is in a scenario where the very transactional I need recipe, I get recipe process is replaced, then what do you do as a creator? And I think what, what's great about where you are and a reflection for other creators to think about is your transaction isn't I need a recipe, I'm going to search, I'm going to get it. Your transaction is more relational and I think there's, that's a great moat in the world of digital content because people are following you, they're not transaction transacting with a recipe and who knows what comes from AI and you know, search generated content. But one of the things that is really helpful to have as a creator is a personal connection, a following and not as transactional of type of business. Like it's not, it's not just like the recipe itself. So does that resonate with you at all?

Yeah, I think, you know, it does go Back though, it always like, people want a recipe that works and it comes out.

Well. Yeah.

You know, people take a flight and they're like, I'm never flying American Airlines again. It was awful. And then next time they're looking for flights. Oh, and Americans cheapest, they fly that, you know, cost sensitive recipes. You know, you make a recipe from somebody's book or their blog and it's a mess or it's disaster and you don't want to go back to it again. So I, when I started, when I moved, well, I was, I started writing books for HarperCollins, but then moved to Ten Speed Press. And they said, I was like, why do you want me?

Like.

And they said, because your recipes work.

Yeah.

And I said, well, doesn't every. Don't everybody's. And they're like, no. And it was very interesting to hear cookbook editors talking about that. And that was. Yeah, it used to be a deal breaker. A lot of times people send a proposal to an editor with recipes in it and then the editor would go home and make the recipes and they didn't work. And they would, they wouldn't buy that book. And same with a blog like you, you know, going to talk about Elise Bauer again, simply recipes. She tested everything and if it didn't work, you know, there was comments and she would fix it and make sure it worked and talk people through it. And same with like, I tested recipes, I wanted to make sure because you would get feedback. Like, that's the interesting thing about the Internet is you get feedback right away if it doesn't work. If you forget an ingredient. You know, you guys wake up at six in the morning and I was like, it doesn't say when, when to add the salt.

Yeah, right. That's how you start your day. Yeah.

Then you're like, these people are trying to make the recipe and they couldn't figure out when to add the salt.

And you.

Dinner.

Yeah.

Quarter teaspoon of salt.

Right, right, right. Yeah. But quality, it comes back to that idea of you as a creator. Your reputation, your authority, your expertise, trustworthiness, all of these things that we talk about.

And I think people that succeed also, you know, you work with a lot of bloggers. The people that succeed do a good job.

Yes. And are borderline obsessive about it.

Their craft.

Yeah. David, we could talk for hours. It's always such a joy. Can you talk about your podcast? Talk about where people can sign up for the newsletter and just generally where people can follow along with you online?

Well, before we Go on. I want to talk about whatever lighting situation you have is great.

It's actually these really huge lights that I, that I have to each side. So I'm cheating and then there's some natural light to the side.

But yeah, I need to come to you for like a two day intensive.

Yeah, we'll do it.

So on my pod, everything is sort of circled around my substack now. And My Substack is davidlebovitz substack.com My podcasts are there. They're also on Apple podcasts, Spotify by whatever podcast platforms people use. I'm, I'm on Instagram at David Lebovitz and same at Facebook. I'm, I'm, I'm a firm believer in always taking your name even if you're not going to use the platform.

Yeah, like just grab the, grab the handle even if you don't.

Yeah, I'm like Snapchat. I was the oldest person on Snapchat. It's good for people to have like, I like to have a podcast. I'm doing it for fun. Same with, you know, I do like having my blog is so I don't, you know, if people are happy blogging, they don't want to switch to a newsletter. Blogging is a great platform. It just, you have to do what works for you. And I was just overwhelmed by the technology and all the stuff. Thankfully, Google's now changing its parameters of how they list websites and back to quality rather than who's got everything plugged in the right place.

Well, and you know, you're a great example of this. We have a lot of friends who are in the deep in the search world and really it sounds like what Google's trying to do is place an emphasis on expertise of a single source for a creator. Like you have a author, you have a publisher, you have a creator. Does this go back, does this piece of content go back to that person and do they have the expertise? And when you have nine cook cookbooks or books. Nine books. And you know, you've been publishing for, since 1969, real person who's making, you.

Know, Lindsay Wright's personal stories about her life. Deb Perlman, you know, she's, you know, you re. If even if you didn't see the header at the, you'd know it was a Deb Perlman post because she's writing about herself.

Yeah.

And that's what Google says now that they want to see rather than just people writing mechanical, optimized content. Optimized content.

Yeah.

I like that. You know, that's always what that was their objective when they started to bring the best to the top. So.

Yep. And back to that. It sounds like in some ways, which is such a great thing. So.

But also, if people, if you're listening, they want to do a newsletter, it's a very interesting medium and there's no cost to doing it. It's a great. You know, having a newsletter is a great thing. I. When I was just blogging, I always told people, it's like, do a newsletter. Even if you only send out, like one every six months, just have a mailing list. Because you never know when all this is going to be taken away from you by an algorithm.

Yes. That's great. And maybe a great note to end on for those who haven't either done it or haven't placed an emphasis on it, to find ways to collect some of those subscribers to start those conversations, because you own that in a different way than all the platforms like we talked about.

Yeah. And you can take it with you. And those people want to hear from.

You, too, so that's great. David, thanks so much for coming on. It's always such a joy to talk to you. And yeah, I really appreciate all that you've done through the years for this community. And we'll have to make it happen again here sooner than six years.

That's okay. It's good to check in every few years. I'm happy to. If you can stay with Paris, you can be on my podcast. I haven't figured out how to do anything online, so, yeah, we'll.

We'll make it happen.

But you guys can hang out in my kitchen with me and cook and talk.

We'll love it. I'll let you and Lindsay cook. I'll talk. That's like, my expertise. So thanks for coming on, David.

All right, thanks.

Hello there, Emily. Here from the Food Blogger Pro team. We hope you enjoyed listening to this week's episode of the podcast. Before we sign off today, I wanted to mention one of the most valuable parts of the Food Blogger Pro membership, and that's our courses. In case you don't already know, as soon as you become a Food Blogger Pro member, you immediately get access to all of our courses here on Food Blogger Pro. We have hours and hours of courses available, including, including SEO for food, blogs, food photography, Google Analytics, social media, and sponsored content. All of these courses have been recorded by the Food Blogger Pro team or some of our industry experts, and they're truly a wealth of knowledge. We're always updating our courses so you can rest assured that you're getting the most up to date information as you're working to grow your blog and your business. You can get access to all of our courses by joining Food Blogger Pro. Just head to foodbloggerpro.com sl join to learn more about the membership and join our community. Thanks again for tuning in and listening to the podcast. Make it a great week.